Rabu, 28 November 2012

Off topic: Patutla bijak sangat

A new study led by Florida State University evolutionary
anthropologist Dean Falk has revealed that portions of the brain of
Albert Einstein are unlike those of most people. The differences could
relate to Einstein’s unique discoveries about the nature of space and
time. Falk’s team used photographs of Einstein’s brain, taken shortly
after his death, but not previously analyzed in detail. The photographs
showed that Einstein’s brain had an unusually complex pattern of
convolutions in the prefrontal cortex, which is important for abstract thinking.

In other words, Einsteins’ brain actually looks different from yours or mine. Falk and her team published their work on November 16, 2012 in the journal Brain.

This
is an actual photo of Einstein’s brain, which was preserved in formalin
by pathologist Thomas Harvey after Einstein’s death in 1955. A new
study of this photo and others of Einstein’s brain reveal an unusually
complex pattern of convolutions in the prefrontal cortex, which is
important for abstract thinking. Photo via the National Museum of
Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Maryland.

A 1920 photo of Einstein in his office at University of Berlin, released in the U.S. in 1920. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Falk and her colleagues obtained 12 original photographs of
Einstein’s brain from the National Museum of Health and Medicine in
Silver Spring, Maryland. They analyzed the photos and compared the
patterns of convoluted ridges and furrows in Einstein’s prefrontal
cortex with those of 85 brains described in other studies. According to
an article in Nature,
many of the photographs were taken from unusual angles. They
apparently show brain structures that weren’t visible in previously
analyzed photos.

How did Einstein’s brain come to undergo so much scrutiny?
Pathologist Thomas Harvey performed an autopsy on Einstein shortly
after his death in 1955. At that time, he removed Einstein’s brain and
preserved it in formalin. He took dozens of black-and-white photos of
the brain. Later, he cut Einstein’s brain up into 240 blocks, took
tissue samples from each block, mounted them onto microscope slides and
distributed the slides to some of the world’s best neuropathologists.

So studies of Einstein’s brain began, although the first detailed one
didn’t appear for 30 more years. In 1985, a study revealed that two
parts of Einstein’s brain contained an unusually large number of non-neuronal cells – called glia – for every neuron,
or nerve-transmitting cell in the brain. Ten years after that,
Einstein’s brain was found to lack a furrow normally seen in the parietal lobe.
Scientists at that time said the missing furrow might have been
related to Einstein’s enhanced ability to think in three dimensions, as
well as to his mathematical skills.

Now the most recent study, by Falk et. al., suggests that the pattern of convolutions in Einstein’s prefrontal cortex
looks different from most people’s. And if all this talk of removing
Einstein’s brain, and photographing it, seems a bit ghoulish, well, the
science journal Nature explains it this way:

Albert Einstein is considered to be one of the most
intelligent people that ever lived, so researchers are naturally curious
about what made his brain tick.

Einstein
in 1947, at the age of 68. His special and general theories of
relativity altered the way physicists, and the rest of us, think about
space and time.

There’s no doubt that Einstein is the most famous abstract thinker
known to most of us. His general and special theories of relativity
changed the way the rest of us think about space and time, in ways you
might take for granted. For example, Einstein said time is relative.
It doesn’t click along steadily for everyone at the same rate. It’s
Einstein who imagined such a thing, and can you picture yourself making
that leap of thought, much less proving it to the world, using the tools
of mathematics and physics?

Another example: Einstein altered scientists’ pre-existing
understanding of gravity, and, in so doing, changed the way we think
about the structure of space. In simple terms, Einstein said that matter causes space to curve. That’s what Einstein’s brain suggested to him and, ultimately, it’s what caused the 20th century revolution in physics.

Einstein’s ability to think abstractly – to think about fundamental
properties of the universe in ways no one ever had – is why he’s
considered the father of modern physics and the most influential
physicist of the 20th century.

Bottom line: Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist
Dean Falk led a study showing that portions of the brain of Albert
Einstein are different from those of most people. Falk’s team used
photographs of Einstein’s brain, taken shortly after his death, and
showed that Einstein’s brain has an unusually complex pattern of
convolutions in the prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain is important for abstract thought. Falk and her team published their work on November 16, 2012 in the journal Brain.